A few news items have been released since our last dance; thank you in advance for your patience with this disquisition. Brian Rolapp established himself as a no-nonsense, PGA Tour CEO by installing a painful but plausible path back to the PGA Tour. He intentionally kept a specific portside player out of repatriation, and he managed to lure Brooks Koepka back to the show. Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau remained non-committally committed to LIV, while Cameron Smith was a bit more committed to the upstart league. Rolapp didn’t need all four, nor even a plural. He needed one, and he got him. Koepka will no doubt remind the others what they are missing, so that they opt for the red pill the next time they get the chance. Rolapp doubled down by adding a soon-to-be-senior, sorry, soon-to-be-Champion in Pat Perez. Perez is not currently eligible to compete, but he has until March (when he turns 50) to get his ducks in a row. My thinking is that intel told Rolapp that Koepka would be welcomed back, but that Perez might need a bit of time to win back his former tourmates. Time may tell.

The Korn Ferry Tour led off the 2026 season with the Bahamas Golf Classic, one of two consecutive Sunday-Wednesday events. The PGA and DP World Tours returned to action in traditional Thursday-Sunday events, giving us a trio of events. If Mike Keiser once opined that one course is a curiosity, but two are a destination, three events equal a Tour Rundown, and here we are.

Wait, there’s a fourth? The Latin America Amateur Championship isn’t a professional competition, but it does offer a Masters invitation to the winner. Let’s go. Welcome to 2026, welcome back to Tour Rundown, and thank you for tuning in. Let’s tackle the events in chronological order of finish.

Korn Ferry Tour @ Bahamas Golf Classic: Taylored to his game

In case you forgot how bemusing professional tournament golf can be, I submit as Exhibit A the performance of the first-round leaders, Justin Suh and John Marshall Butler. Each lad signed for a ten-under 62 at the Ocean Club in the Bahamas’ Paradise Island. Each golfer played the next three rounds in minus-four and finished on 14 deep, good for a tie for 44th position. That is tournament golf.

The week’s top hound sat five shots behind the leaders on day one. Taylor Dickson opened with 67, but paired it with a Friday 62, to head into the weekend at minus-fifteen. Dickson never let up on the accelerator pedal. He weekended with 67 and 65, to earn a three-shot win over Canada’s Roger Sloan. Sloan stood even with Dickson through two rounds, thanks to 64 and 65 to begin the journey. His weekend was solid, at 68 and 67; he did nothing wrong on Sunday, but could not keep pace with Dickson’s torrid birdie machine.

The week belonged to Taylor Dickson. He posted the low round on two days (Friday and Sunday) and returned solid scores on the other two days. He shall make an attempt at two in a row as the KFT moves to Great Abaco for the eponymous Classic during week two in the Bahamas.

DP World Tour @ Dubai Invitational: Nacho week? Guess again.

One of the delights of professional golf fandom is the flipping of the script. The DI seemed to be a coronation of something we already knew. One of the major champions, like Rory McIlroy or Shane Lowry, would gently raise a champion’s trophy at week’s end. Certainly, fellows like Armitage or Fritelli, Hillier or Guerrier, would feign contention and score a nice paycheck, but the true spoils would return home to an island in the northerly Atlantic.

Guess again. The wave-like scultpure will head north, all right, but to the Iberian peninsula, not Ireland or Northern Ireland. The muchacho that alternated between 68 and 69 all week, who never soared too high nor dived too low, made birdie at the penultimate hole to reach minus-ten. He survived a scare at the last, when his approach drifted right, agonizingly close to the penalty area. Spain’s Nacho Elvira remained calm, chipped to a foot, and tapped in for a one-shot win over England’s Daniel Hillier.

An hour before, the 2026 DI appeared destined to feature Lowry or McIlroy, or perhaps both, at the top of the board. Lowry reached ten-deep with his card’s fifth birdie, at the 15th hole. His drive drifted slightly left at the home hole, into the light rough, complicating the lie. His approach sailed long, into the sands of Dubai.. Lowry’s explosion was strong enough to catch the green’s front and drop into the penalty area. Double bogey at the last dropped him into a tie for third position, two behind the winning tally. His partner in crime, Rory McIlroy, fared little better. The reigning Masters champion stood at nine-under on the final tee deck. His drive fanned violently right, nearly in the lateral penalty area. He did well to cross the water but a flyer lie took him into the deep bunker. When he failed to hole out for birdie, hope was lost.

With a one-foot tap-in, San Ignacio had claimed a third DP World Tour title, and first since 2024. The caravan now moves from Dubai Creek to Emirates for this week’s Dubai Desert Classic.

PGA Tour @ SONY Open: Got some Gotterup

As the selection process waned for the 2025 USA Ryder Cup side, two names figured in the I know he won’t make it, but he should guesswork. Chris Gotterup was one of those names. Gotterup first won a year earlier, in 2024, in Myrtle Beach, then scorched the month of July 2025, with a win at the Scottish Open and a solo third at the Open Championship. He and Maverick McNealy did everything they possibly could to make the squad, but it wasn’t yet his time.

As of January 19th, 2026, Gotterup’s time is nearly here. The Maryland native claimed the first PGA Tour event of the new year by two shots over Ryan Gerard. The Rutgers alum has discovered the special sauce that keeps him in contention when he is. The three-time winner opened with 63, a shot back of the day-one lead. His subsequent rounds (69 and 68) were solid performances in windy conditions. The pundits call Saturday Moving Day on the tours, but this week, it was Sunday. Gotterup teed off in the penultimate pairing. By the time he and Kevin Roy reached the first deck, birdies not seen in two days had blossomed.

After birdies at holes two and three, the eventual winner tugged a tee shot left on the par-three fourth, and faced a daunting, seventy-feetish putt for two. His first putt ran five feet past, and the second putt missed, caught the upper lip, and did not fall. That four would prove to be his only bogey on the Sunday dance card. Birdies at seven and nine were followed by two more, at 12 and 14. By this juncture, only Ryan Gerard stood between Gotterup and victory number three. A final birdie, at the windswept 17th, brought the winner to 16-under par, and to the top of the FedEx Cup money list.

Latin America Amateur Championship @ Lima Golf Club: Pulcini putts!

It would be casi imposible to imagine the weight of expectation and anticipation, for all the competitors at the LAAC. The winner earns invitations to not just the Masters, but also to the two pre-eminent Open (US and R&A) and Amateur (rinse and repeat) competitions for the year. Ten previous winners tasted the spoils of victory, and the first-ever visit (with an asterisk) to Peru promised an eleventh champion of equal gratitude.

Lima Golf Club should have hosted the seventh playing of the LAAC, but the worldwide pandemic cancelled the 2021 playing. Five years on, the Limeños were itching to show off their city and golf club to the amateur golf world. The day-one lead stood at 66, and one of the co-leaders, Andy Schonbaum of Argentina, followed up with a 68 to take the halfway medal. Three behind was countryman Mateo Pulcini, with a number of other golfers well within striking distance.

Day three saw the low round of the week, on the card of yet another azul celeste, Segundo Oliva Pinto. SAP posted 64 to take a one-shot advantage over Schonbaum, with Pulcini lurking two back. Sunday saw a fade followed by a rebound from Oliva Pinto. Schonbaum finished in a seventh-place tie, while Oliva Pinto came fifth. The stretch run featured exemplary play from Pulcini and Venezuela’s Virgilio Paz Valdes. Both golfers reached minus-four early on the back nine, then played the closing stretch in minus-one to forge a tie for first. After two playoff holes, Pulcini stood tallest of the field, the eleventh winner of the Latin American Amateur Championship.

Pulcini is the third Platense to win the LAAC. Paz Valdes would have been the first Venezuelan to lift the trophy. The greatest rivalry in South America, Chile vs. Argentina, now recognizes three champions from each country. 2027 can’t get here quickly enough.